Provided by: notmuch_0.29.3-1ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
SYNOPSIS
notmuch count [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch dump [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<file>] [--] [<search-term>
...]
notmuch reindex [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch search [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch tag +<tag> ... -<tag> [--] <search-term> ...
DESCRIPTION
Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases) which will match all
messages that contain all of the given terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of
the sender or recipient headers.
As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single asterisk ("*") will
match all messages.
Search prefixes
In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force terms to match
against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets> indicate user-supplied values).
If notmuch is built with Xapian Field Processors (see below) some of the prefixes with
<regex> forms can be also used to restrict the results to those whose value matches a
regular expression (see regex(7)) delimited with //, for example:
notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
body:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
Match terms in the body of messages.
from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of an email
message.
to:<name-or-address>
The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient of an email
message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> or subject:/<regex>/
Any term prefixed with subject: will match only text from the subject of an email.
Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by including quotation marks
around the phrase, immediately following subject:.
attachment:<word>
The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions)
of attachments to email messages.
mimetype:<word>
The mimetype: prefix will be used to match text from the content-types of MIME
parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
tag:<tag> or tag:/<regex>/ or is:<tag> or is:/<regex>/
For tag: and is: valid tag values include inbox and unread by default for new
messages added by notmuch new as well as any other tag values added manually with
notmuch tag.
id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
For id: and mid:, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
thread:<thread-id>
The thread: prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are generated
internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages). These thread ID values
can be seen in the first column of output from notmuch search
thread:{<notmuch query>}
If notmuch is built with Xapian Field Processors (see below), threads may be
searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary notmuch query in {}. For example,
the following returns threads containing a message from mallory and one (not
necessarily the same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
% notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand this, the user
should think of the query thread:{<something>} as expanding to all of the thread
IDs which match <something>; notmuch then performs a second search using the
expanded query.
path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/** or path:/<regex>/
The path: prefix searches for email messages that are in particular directories
within the mail store. The directory must be specified relative to the top-level
maildir (and without the leading slash). By default, path: matches messages in the
specified directory only. The "/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the
specified directory and all its subdirectories recursively. path:"" matches
messages in the root of the mail store and, likewise, path:** matches all messages.
path: will find a message if any copy of that message is in the specific directory.
folder:<maildir-folder> or folder:/<regex>/
The folder: prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder. For
MH-style folders, this is equivalent to path:. For maildir, this includes messages
in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends
on your mail configuration. For maildir++, folder:"" matches the inbox folder
(which is the root in maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and
nested folders are separated by "."s, such as folder:.classes.topology. For "file
system" maildir, the inbox is typically folder:INBOX and nested folders are
separated by slashes, such as folder:classes/topology.
folder: will find a message if any copy of that message is in the specific folder.
date:<since>..<until> or date:<date>
The date: prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages within a
particular time range (based on the Date: header).
See DATE AND TIME SEARCH below for details on the range expression, and supported
syntax for <since> and <until> date and time expressions.
The time range can also be specified using timestamps without including the date
prefix using a syntax of:
<initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since 1970-01-01
00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way is considered legacy and predates
the date prefix.
lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
The lastmod: prefix can be used to restrict the result by the database revision
number of when messages were last modified (tags were added/removed or filenames
changed). This is usually used in conjunction with the --uuid argument to notmuch
search to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
query:<name>
The query: prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved queries added with
notmuch-config(1). Named queries are only available if notmuch is built with Xapian
Field Processors (see below).
property:<key>=<value>
The property: prefix searches for messages with a particular <key>=<value> property
pair. Properties are used internally by notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to
messages. A given key can be present on a given message with several different
values. See notmuch-properties(7) for more details.
User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config(1) for details.
Operators
In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with Boolean operators
(and, or, not, and xor). Each term in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical
AND if no explicit operator is provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be
implicitly combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not <term>' but
unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expression. Parentheses can also be
used to control the combination of the Boolean operators, but will have to be protected
from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any
parenthesized expression).
In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several operators specific
to text searching.
notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The threshold can be set like
this:
notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
The search
notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the same order as in
the query. The threshold can be set the same as with NEAR:
notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
Stemming
Stemming in notmuch means that these searches
notmuch search detailed
notmuch search details
notmuch search detail
will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the term to the common
stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word will be performed
unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not get results for "Johnson"; phrase
searches are also unstemmed (see below for details). Stemming is currently only supported
for English. Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
Wildcards
It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for 'wildc*' will match
'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either boolean, supporting exact matches like "‐
tag:inbox" or probabilistic, supporting a more flexible term based searching. Certain
special prefixes are processed by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's
built in styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
Boolean
tag:, id:, thread:, folder:, path:, property:
Probabilistic
body:, to:, attachment:, mimetype:
Special
from:, query:, subject:
Terms and phrases
In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and phrases. Phrases are indicated
by double quotes (but beware you probably need to protect those from your shell) and
insist that those unstemmed words occur in that order. One useful, but initially
surprising feature is that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
• "a list of words"
• a-list-of-words
• a/list/of/words
• a.list.of.words
Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with probabilistic prefixes
such as to:, from:, and subject:. In particular
subject:(pizza free)
is equivalent to
subject:pizza and subject:free
Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
subject:"pizza free"
will not.
Quoting
Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect boolean terms, regular
expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or other special characters, e.g.
tag:"a tag"
folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell e.g.
% notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
% notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
DATE AND TIME SEARCH
notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of expressing dates and times,
both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in relative terms ("yesterday"). Any number of
relative terms can be combined ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be
combined with relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of the
syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
The range expression
date:<since>..<until>
The above expression restricts the results to only messages from <since> to <until>, based
on the Date: header.
<since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday". In this case,
<since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe (the beginning of yesterday) and
<until> is taken as the latest time it could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly,
date:january..february matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the date prefix, each
timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As above, each timestamp is a number
representing the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The expansion takes
place before interpretation, and thus, for example, date:monday..! matches from the
beginning of Monday until the end of Monday. With Xapian Field Processor support (see
below), non-range date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can replace the spaces with
'_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases) leave the spaces out altogether. Examples
in this man page use spaces for clarity.
Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possible to specify
date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or end time, respectively.
Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on open ended ranges, but it does not work as
expected either.
Relative date and time
[N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|seconds|secs) [...]
All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous single m being m for
minutes and M for months.
Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred. Additionally, the unit
may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last week" or "this month").
When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time specification will
be relative from the specified absolute date and time.
Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
Supported absolute time formats
• H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
• H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
• HHMMSS
• now
• noon
• midnight
• Examples: 17:05, 5pm
Supported absolute date formats
• YYYY-MM[-DD]
• DD-MM[-[YY]YY]
• MM-YYYY
• M[M]/D[D][/[YY]YY]
• M[M]/YYYY
• D[D].M[M][.[YY]YY]
• D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
• Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
• Wee[kday]
Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
Time zones
• (+|-)HH:MM
• (+|-)HH[MM]
Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS
Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the presence of the
Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your notmuch was built against a
sufficiently recent version of Xapian by running
% notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
Currently the following features require field processor support:
• non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
• named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
• regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\[SPAM\]/"
• thread subqueries, e.g. "thread:{from:bob}"
SEE ALSO
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5),
notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-properties(1),
*notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), *notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
AUTHOR
Carl Worth and many others
COPYRIGHT
2009-2020, Carl Worth and many others